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Hélène Binet's angels: W Awards trophies 2020

Photographer and 2019 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner Hélène Binet gives us a sneak peek into her creative process for this year’s trophies

Last year, Madelon Vriesendorp, winner of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize 2018, begun the tradition of designing and making the trophies for the W Awards (formerly the Women in Architecture awards) with her collection of four female torsos presented to the winners of the 2019 awards. One of the proud recipients included photographer Hélène Binet, who was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize 2019, who was duly tasked with designing the creations for this year’s winners.

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Source: Géraldine Recker

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Source: Hélène Binet

Photographs from Binet’s Levitation series were chosen by Binet and the AR editorial team

This year’s trophies take the form of photographs from Binet’s Levitation series, which capture the angels of Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome. The series of photographs captures the frozen softness of the angels, fluid in both their rippling folds of stone and ambiguous gender identity. The four photographs were carefully chosen in collaboration with the AR editorial team at Binet’s studios in London. The process of comparing test prints of different finishes was captured in Binet’s photograph commissioned for the cover of the AR March 2020 issue.

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Source: Géraldine Recker

Taking as inspiration her preoccupation with photography ‘you can hold in your hands’, the photographs are objects, Diasec-mounted and supported on small wooden stands. The stands were designed in collaboration with the AR editorial team and sculptor and maker Samuel Adams, inspired by Lina Bo Bardi’s glass easels created for the MASP in São Paulo in 1968, where a piece of glass is clasped at its base in concrete.

Francesca Torzo has been declared the winner of the Moira Gemill Prize for Emerging Architecture, along with Mariam Kamara who has been Highly Commended, and Tracy Meller who has won the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice

In Awards

A curated selection of the best architectural ideas in the world to inspire your mind and feed your soul. Each special edition is created using sheet-fed litho printing with hand-inserted tip-ins and gatefolds with vegetable-based inks on a mix of FSC-certified paper and card. Don't miss the next issue –